Previews

Huge Preview: Assassin's Creed 3

The killer series arrives in America with a fresh new face and big promises.

Ubisoft Montreal's Creative Director Alex Hutchinson threw around some mighty big talk during the Assassin's Creed 3 unveiling. "I'm really sick of shipping the first drafts of games," he declared. "Our goal is to ship Assassin's Creed 3.5, not just Assassin's Creed 3." Some might call that a stinging indictment of the "release now, patch later" attitude of many game publishers. Others might call them fightin' words. He's got an impressive-looking game to back up his swagger, at least -- certainly the best-looking and most ambitious game in the almost five-year-old series -- but can it be that good?

'Merica! F**k yeah!

That's a question that won't be answered for a bit (until October 30th at least) but AC3 certainly has promise. We've known for a while now that this one takes place during the American Revolutionary War era, covering a span from 1753 to 1783, and that its hero -- another ancestor of modern-day descendant Desmond Miles -- is a half Mohawk, half English Assassin who goes by the name of Connor. Hutchinson made a point of saying that Connor's no Ezio clone: "We didn't want the Native American lothario. He's quieter, and he's driven by a general desire to help people." In other words, he's the first Boy Scout.

Wars Within Wars

"They think they're helping the world, they're just doing it through control. They're kind of like Republicans."

The twist is that while all of the targets in this demo just happened to be British, Connor's not actually part of the revolution. Instead, he's fighting a separate but overlapping war with battle lines perpendicular to the Colonials and the British, and we can expect to see members of the rival secret orders of the Assassins and Templars on both sides of the struggle. Hutchinson couldn't resist throwing another firebomb: "For us, Templars have never been fist-waving villains bent on destroying the world. They think they're helping the world, they're just doing it through control. They're kind of like Republicans. Not bad, necessarily."

In the proud tradition of Assassin's Creed games, AC3 again centers around Desmond's technologically induced virtual flashbacks to one of his Batman-like Assassin forefathers, who runs around semi-discretely murdering Templars before they can murder him. That part's the same. The new part is that this time our Assassin runs, climbs, and leaps across the rooftops of Colonial-era New York and Boston, as well as Tarzans his way through the trees of the unspoiled Frontier to the west -- a map that, by itself, is said to be 50 percent larger than AC Brotherhood's Rome map.

They're worse shots than Stormtroopers.

It's more than a change of scenery from Europe -- Hutchinson asserts that it's a whole new environment for hunting down your targets. "If you're climbing a building in an AC game, it's kind of like lowering a curtain. You can't see anything, you can't see anything, and then you get to the top and you get a vista, like a reveal. But if you're climbing a tree, because it obscures so much less of the screen, you always have peripheral vision. So it's much easier to track someone directly below you or near you or that sort of thing. To me, it feels much more like stalking in a forest than it does in a city."

Another advantage of the new setting: it's a fresh start that should serve as a new entry point for those who haven't tried an AC game before. "It's a brand-new hero, a brand-new era. If you've ever had an interest in the franchise, now is as good a time as any," declared Hutchinson. He added that his team's taking care to ensure that we won't need to have played previous games to understand the plot, but there will be plenty of "bonus" references for those who have.

Bang Bang

Connor operates in a time and place that's full of soldiers with guns.

With that backdrop comes widespread use of gunpowder, and Connor operates in a time and place that's full of soldiers with guns. But they were terrible guns. "What we found was that those guns were so bad that most of the Native American tribes were still using bows and arrows because they're much faster and much more accurate," said Hutchinson. Poor accuracy and long reload times just happen to be weaknesses that can be exploited by a fast-moving agile killer who can quickly get from tough-to-hit range to inside an arm's reach. The fights I saw -- the first being "target" footage that Ubisoft created as mock-up of what the gameplay is supposed to look like -- showed that Connor's combat won't play dramatically different from Altair and Enzio's, but it'll be full of impressive new attacks and animations.

The scene, which began with Connor taking orders from a Colonial general to kill off a murderous Redcoat, kicked into action with Connor looking down from a tree on a group of a half-dozen British soldiers marching through light snow. Taking them by surprise, he snared the rear guard with a grappling line and wrapped it over the branch, and as he jumped down to deal with the rest of them, the struggling Redcoat was pulled helplessly up into the tree as a counterweight. The next soldiers fell to Connor's dual pistols, which he discarded after firing; two more died in elaborately animated hatchet and knife kills.

There's no one up here but us squirrels!

"We rebuilt the combat from the ground up to allow two-handed combat everywhere," said Hutchinson, who also pointed out subtle new features like the ability to fight enemies who are on slightly higher or lower ground than you -- something other AC games can't handle. The final man -- the target -- put up a short fight with his bayoneted musket, until Connor grabbed it, planted the butt of the musket in the snowy ground at the enemy's feet, and triggered it for a bloody finish. If it's as much fun to play as that was to watch, it'll be a good time.

If it's as much fun to play as that was to watch, it'll be a good time.

The next scene switched to actual gameplay from the work-in-progress version, and I was impressed by how close to the target Ubisoft got. The most notable difference I picked up were that the tree branches didn't sway quite as noticeably as Connor leaped from one to the next, and his costume had changed. "We had an ongoing argument about how Native American he should look," recounted Hutchinson. "In the end, we decided that he was a Native American joining a western European organization. The narrative of the game is that the Assassins arrive in America, and he joins them. He has to wear the suit, but he brings along things that he's comfortable with."

Dressed to Kill

Where before he'd had a more Native look to his outfit, which had included furs and pieces of tan leather, in this version Connor wore a white leather Assassin's hood and coat lined with Colonial-style blue, but kept the Native American-style leather pants. For gear, he carried his tomahawk and pistols on his belt and a bow and quiver on his back -- and of course a retractable blade up his sleeve. As he trudged through deep snow on a wilderness map, each step took considerable effort. AC3's snow will play a major role in the winter months, and particularly in the Frontier it'll have varying effects on Connor and NPCs depending on its depth. Connor will be able to gain a major advantage by moving through the trees instead. In this case, however, he didn't have to go far to discover the body of Redcoat courier, surrounded by bloody snow.

As Connor examined the body and retrieved an envelope the dead man carried, a massive black bear came up behind him and gave him a good whack. "Early on we were like, 'There have to be animals! No one in open-world games is doing animals!' And then of course four months later Red Dead Redemption ships," lamented Hutchinson. But the animals made it in anyway, with docile animals like deer giving life to the forests and serving as hunting targets for challenges as well as bigger, meaner bears as the series' first non-human combatants.

I'm coming for you, British tea. Soon.

Connor quickly recovered and stabbed the bear to death, then climbed a rock wall with all the agility that Altair and Ezio display climbing buildings, thanks to animations Ubisoft says are based on motion-capturing real rock climbers. When he reached the top he overlooked a town with windmill and smoke rising from the chimneys; looking down, he spotted a column of Colonial troops escorting a horse-drawn wagon. He ran through trees, bouncing from branch to branch until he was directly above them, and when the wagon passed below he did the signature Assassin's "leap of faith" drop into its load of hay, catching a free ride. Hutchenson says that homage is one of the few carryover animations we'll see in AC3 -- nearly everything else has been redone.

Connor even ran through an open second-story window and out the other side as he eluded his pursuers.

The demo skipped to Boston, in the summer of 1775. There's no more snow, but the city is occupied by British forces, who stand on every corner and warily watch the hundreds of civilians roaming the streets. As Connor walked from the dock through town, various scripted events gave life to the Bostonians. A boy standing on a crate selling newspapers by shouting out the recent events; people hauling loads of goods; a thief grabbing a dropped apple and making a break for it; workers sawing lumber; even a dog trotting by. Connor casually strolled up to a Redcoat checkpoint, but he was recognized. He broke into a run and pushed past them, moving smoothly as he bounded over barrels and leaped off canopies, and even ran through an open second-story window and out the other side as he eluded his pursuers. That's a new trick -- though not all buildings will have interiors, some will serve as shortcuts.

Points of Reference

Boston is one of three cities we'll see in AC3, with the others being New York and (to a lesser, non-open-world extent,) Philadelphia. But, as America has a habit of rebuilding cities every hundred years or so, they're barely recognizable even to residents. "Especially New York, with the street layout, we've been pretty good," said Hutchenson, "but the problem is the building references have radically changed. If you know Kings College and those sorts of things in New York, you can orient yourself around them."

For the finale, Ubisoft skipped to the Battle of Bunker Hill -- June 17, 1775 -- just in time to hear General William Prescott tell his troops "Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes!" over the din of battle. The close-up as Connor and Prescott discuss how to reach his next target in the middle of the British camp shows off some impressive animations which, according to Ubisoft, are a result of a motion-capture system that gathers voice recordings, facial animation, and body movements simultaneously.

One if by land, two if by canoe.

Against Prescott's gruff advice, Connor decided to make a frontal assault on the camp -- a path that took him through the heat of the battle and showcased how many characters Ubisoft has managed to get on screen at once this time: 3,000. "It gives you the sense that it's a war, not eight guys hitting each other with sticks," said Hutchinson. "Or you could be looking down on a massive protest crowd. In the new cities, with these wider avenues, it was just kind of needed to have more people on screen."

British musket volleys whizzed by and struck soldiers, who returned fire, spouting flame and plumes of realistic smoke.

It's an impressive battle -- as Connor made his way through the Colonial ranks, British musket volleys whizzed by and struck soldiers, who returned fire, spouting flame and plumes of realistic smoke. Cannon shells landed every few second, sending troops flying. Connor had to time his movements between volleys, working his way across the battlefield until he reached the nearby woods. There, in the trees, he was able to move much more freely, swinging from branches like they were monkey bars until he reaches a British patrol. This is a repeat of the first fight, with the addition of a human shield move that absorbed several musket balls and left the rest of the soldiers scrambling to reload as Connor hacked them down with his tomahawk, culminating with a particularly gory hatchet to the face. After the fight Connor climbed to high ground overlooking the British camp and spotted his target: a British general on horseback, surrounded by armed me. His plan: a ballsy charge. He killed a few who stood in his path, then made a flying leap toward the general... and the demo ended.

The More Things Change...

So, is this the same Assassin's Creed game with a new skin and a few upgrades? Well, yes and no -- there are a lot of those upgrades and re-thinking of old concepts. But mostly yes, in that it'll all be grounded in very familiar controls and gameplay.

In my post-demo conversation with Hutchinson, it almost seemed as though the gameplay would distinguish itself as much by what's not in there as what is. "There are a lot of things we're changing radically, because we feel like the mechanics were awesome but were starting to feel a little familiar," he explained. "With Ezio, we felt like every game added more and more tools. So we've removed a bunch of those that should just be allowed to be cool things that Ezio did. So we don't have the hook blade, we're not doing the den defense. We're radically changing the Brotherhood, so you don't have the idea of recruiting dozens and dozens of Assassins to help you out -- it'll be much more personal. You won't be buying or upgrading Rome, but there is an economy system and a concept of ownership in a big new system we're building. The fast-travel system is getting an overhaul because we don't want you buying aqueducts in Boston. We're combining a bunch of mini-stores into bigger general stores. Every mechanic should have at the very least a new coat of paint, and all those that don't fit the period or aren't things that we enjoyed as much are disappearing."

"Hey, how come his gun shoots straight but ours suck?"

Hutchinson backed up his talk of quality with some numbers: by the time it's released, he said AC3 will have had a three-year development cycle -- the longest since the original Assassin's Creed -- and taken double the man-hours of the Ezio games. They're really pushing this as a high-quality production, including a whole presentation on subtle details like creating the Animus UI menus in 3D to allow them to do... fancy menu stuff.

Sadly the PC version won't get much special treatment, he admitted: "We're definitely supporting PC, we love PC, but I think it'll be PC with a controller. I don't see us investing hugely in a mouse and keyboard setup. I think if you want to play on PC and you want to play Assassin's Creed, you have a controller." So status quo for the series there, though I personally found the previous games to be playable with mouse and keyboard.

Finally, Ubisoft has confirmed that there will be a multiplayer mode of some kind, (though it's yet to be shown off,) and has failed to deny the existence of a co-op mode, which basically means there will be one. We'll expect to see that in a few months' time.

A few words to temper your expectations on this one: based on what I've seen, Assassin's Creed 3 won't change your mind about the series if the previous games didn't do it for you -- it's had some significant revisions that may remind some why they fell in love with brutally stabbing people to death in the first place, but it's still very much the same game at heart and not a reinvention. Also, until proven otherwise, we must assume it'll include Ubisoft's barely tolerable always-on DRM, which is a really unfortunate mark against an otherwise fine series that Ubisoft should really reconsider.

And with that, I shall leave you with my closing conversation with Ubisoft PR regarding the release date, which has been officially announced as October 30th, 2012 for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

GameSpy: So when's the PC release date?

Ubisoft PR: October 30th.

GameSpy: Yeah, but when's the real PC release date?

Ubisoft PR: It's October 30th.

GameSpy: Uh huh. And can you say that with a straight face?

Ubisoft PR: You can ask me as many times as you like, but the answer will be the same.

GameSpy: Very well, let's move on. So, when will you announce the delay of the PC version?

Ubisoft PR: ...

Spy Guy says: I have a sneaking suspicion that this game will not come out on PC in time for Halloween. Maybe it's because Ubisoft has pulled this same routine on every single AC game to date, delaying the PC version by at least a couple of months. You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to fool Spy Guy for a fifth time!